Dr Lucy Browning



Lucy Browning is now at the University of New South Wales.

The evolution and maintenance of cooperative breeding systems, in which individuals care for young that are not their own, have been the focus of extensive research. However, we know little about why individuals belonging to the same group often show extreme variation in cooperative behaviour. My research will aim to understand variation in contributions to care among helpers within the same group. I shall investigate the causes and consequences of different helping strategies using a combination of experimental and observational techniques on a wild population of chestnut-crowned babblers (Pomatostomus ruficeps), a cooperatively breeding bird endemic to Australia.

I shall focus on 3 potential sources of variation in helper contributions, using chick provisioning as a measure of cooperation:

1. The usual suspects: sex, age, condition and relatedness to recipient
All of these factors have previously been found to influence cooperative behaviour in other species.

2. Heritability
I shall use cross-fostering experiments to determine the genetic component of cooperative behaviour.

3. Individual personality differences
Personality describes suites of behavioural traits that are correlated within individuals and are consistent across contexts. While the causes of personality differences are not fully understood, it is widely accepted that they arise through interactions between a genetic component and early rearing conditions. Thus, personality has the potential to explain variation in helper contributions in two ways: (1) as a proxy for genetic and environmental interactions experienced during development, and (2) via its downstream effects on life history traits, such as dispersal decisions.

I shall measure personality using a series of established behavioural tests, including the speed with which helpers explore novel environments and individual response to novel food.

I graduated from Edinburgh in 2004 with a BSc (Hons) in Zoology. I then spent a year at Oxford doing an MSc in Biology, followed by 7 months in South Africa working as a field assistant on a long-term study of cooperatively breeding pied babblers.

(Photos courtesy of Cat Young & Geordie Stewart)

• Raihani, N.J., Nelson-Flower, M.J., Moyes, K., Browning, L.E. & Ridley, A.R. (2009) Synchronous provisioning increases brood survival in cooperatively breeding pied babblers. Journal of Animal Ecology 2010, 79, 44–52 Download PDF
• Raihani, N.J., Ridley, A.R., Browning, L.E., Nelson-Flower, M.J. & Knowles, S. (2008) Juvenile female aggression in cooperatively breeding pied babblers: causes and contexts. Ethology, 114: 452-458 Download PDF
• Harrison, F., Browning, L.E., Vos, M. & Buckling, A. (2006) Cooperation and virulence in acute Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. BMC Biology, 4:21. Download PDF
• Shuker, D.M., Sykes, E.M., Browning, L.E., Beukeboom. L.W. and West, S.A. (2006) Male influence on sex allocation in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, 59: 829-835. Download PDF